Ok, so this is a big question. Different points of view will take you to different conclusions as to what is best so I will try not to do anything other than state facts. I’ll let you know that my bias is that I think permanent insurance is important.
Term is pure insurance. There is no cash value. Your best value year over year would be to buy what is called Annual Renewable Term. You pay the company the costs of insurance and if you die you family gets a lot of money. It gets more expensive every year, because you cost more to insure every year. Most people want some price stability in their lives so they buy level term. This gives you a guaranteed price for a set number of years. You pay more than you should when you start and less than you should when the term ends but the price is stable. There are a few other types of term, but these are the big two. They both offer level death benefits too, though you can get term where the death benefit goes down over time. This is usually mortgage protection policies.
Term has no cash value and offers fewer guarantees but is usually cheaper than permanent insurance, particularly if you are young. The more guarantees you layer in the more you pay.
Why would you want term? If you are worried about what will happen to your family if you die too soon term is for you. If you need to leave replacement income, or the ability to pay off a house, or leave money to help raise kids term is great. But, term is by definition temporary insurance. According to LIMRA less than 2% of term policies pay a death benefit. Those 2% are usually glad they have term, or their families are, but 98% of everyone pays into a term policy and gets nothing.
Permanent insurance, which is a broad category of insurance that includes whole life but also other types of policies, is just that. It lasts as long as you do. It is a bad vehicle for simple short term needs, lime mortgage protection, but 100% of permanent policies pay a death benefit unless the owner drops the policy. It is more expensive. How much more depends on a lot of factors including what kind of permanent insurance you have, your health, you age, your sex and your goals (including do you want to pay for life or stop paying at a certain time) . There is no better way to transfer money from generation to generation than permanent insurance. Wealthy people, the 1%,they all own a lot of permanent insurance. Life insurance benefits pay out tax free. Life insurance benefits aren’t subject to probate. You usually get more out of the life insurance policy than you pay in.
Permanent insurance has cash value (usually). I won’t get into ways you can use your cash value as a living benefit, but you can. Though make sure you vet anyone who is pitching life insurance as an investment vehicle very carefully. Many of them are hucksters. Not all of them. But a lot of them.
Buy term and invest the difference can be an ok strategy IF you are under 40, if you actually invest the difference, if you know what you are doing or have a good agent. Mostly it’s a way for someone trying to sell you something to make you a client.
The biggest reasons why people want to talk to me is that they have a term policy that has expired or will expire soon, or they have a badly constructed universal life policy that was designed to be an investment vehicle and is now falling apart.
I don’t know how well I explained that so feel free to ask follow up questions.
I don’t see a problem.